Chapter 9
The sunroom was Rachel’s favorite room in the Hall.
It faced south-east, which meant it caught the morning light and held it late into the afternoon.
It was furnished with a comfortable lack of formality, a room that had been used rather than displayed.
There was a sofa that had been sat upon considerably in a nice shade of blue, a low table with rings on it from years of teacups, a shelf of books that had been read rather than arranged.
Rachel set down her saucer with enough force to rattle the plate the following afternoon. “The heroine faints on seven separate occasions, Anna. Seven. I counted. And not once does she do anything useful with all that swooning. It is unkind to us women, don’t you think?”
“Is she with child?”
“Yes, but that is beside the point!”
“It can be a terrible but most beautiful vocation,” Anna said softly.
“Fainting?”
“Carrying a child.”
“I had no idea you wished for one… do you, Anna?”
Anna pressed her lips together, then glanced away.
“In my heart of hearts, yes. I miss my father so terribly, having lost him at such a young age… and then seeing how hard it was for my mother to carry on after that… I have always wanted the chance to rewrite my story. To have my own child in a loving family that survives, thrives and endures. I know this is a lot to just say.”
“Not at all,” Rachel said, her eyes now fixed on Anna. “I think that is a beautiful wish. And I hope it comes true.
“Enough of that,” Anna said. “Tell me more about this book.”
Rachel picked up a biscuit, examined it as though it had somehow contributed to the novel’s failings, and set it back down. “Her husband disappears for forty pages in some battle, and we are simply expected to accept this.”
“It’s likely a way to—”
“I have opinions about the ending as well,” she said, picking up the biscuit, when the door opened.
The old butler, Mr. Simmons, did not announce anything. He simply appeared in the doorway, waited for their eyes to find him, and gave a single small nod.
“Lady Oldbarrow, my lady,” he said. “She has just arrived.”
Rachel sat up very straight.
“She…” She looked at Anna. Anna looked back at her. “Did she? I mean… was there any… did I miss something, Simmons?”
“No notice, my lady.” Simmons permitted himself the faintest elevation of tone that conveyed, without stating, his own position on arrivals without notice. “Her ladyship’s carriage came up the drive approximately ten minutes ago. She is in the entrance hall.”
“Oh dear.” Rachel set down her biscuit, then she looked at Anna with an expression that was somewhere between apologetic and helpless.
“Lady Oldbarrow is Frederick’s godmother,” she said with a shrug, “And, unfortunately, she does not believe in announcing herself.”
“I gathered,” Anna said.
“She is not… Oh, she is wonderful, truly, but she is…”
“Discerning?” Anna offered.
“Extraordinary is what I was going to say.” Rachel stood and smoothed her skirt. “She will see everything. Immediately. There is no point in…”
She elegantly cut ahead of Simmons, which Anna assumed was how Lady Oldbarrow moved through most spaces. It was not done rudely, but with the air of a woman who had long since established that the world should arrange itself around her arrival. Anna liked her instantly.
She was about sixty years old, wearing her age as a credential rather than a deficit. Her dress was clearly London, her hat Paris, and her eyes were incredibly bright blue and dark all the same, moving over the room. She settled on Rachel first, then on Anna. A pause. Not long. But specific.
Anna knew her. Not well, but they had been in the same rooms perhaps four or five times, the overlapping periphery of London society.
It was enough to recognize and be recognized.
She could see the recognition in Lady Oldbarrow’s face now, behind the polished composure of it.
The rapid, precise assembly of puzzle pieces.
“Rachel, my dear.” Lady Oldbarrow crossed to her and permitted herself to be kissed on the cheek. “You look well. The country agrees with you.” She turned. “And Miss Anna Cartwell. I never forget a face.”
The name, not the other one. Anna noted it, and was grateful. She allowed herself to breathe more steadily.
“Lady Oldbarrow,” Anna curtsied. “It’s a pleasure.”
“Is it? Sit down, both of you. I want tea, and I want to know what is going on in this house.”
“Nothing is—” Rachel began.
“Rachel.” Lady Oldbarrow settled onto the sofa as if taking a throne. “I have known you since before you were born. I recall when you were four years old, you used to hide behind the hall curtains when you didn’t want to go to bed. You have the same expression now that you had then. Sit.”
Frederick came in and stopped just inside the door, taking in the room. His godmother was on the sofa, Rachel beside her, Anna in the chair opposite.
Of all the times to visit, she chose now.
“Frederick.” Lady Oldbarrow did not turn around. “I heard you come in.”
“And I heard you arrive, Godmother.” He came forward and bent to kiss her cheek, which she received as a queen might receive a formal salutation. “No letter. No message.”
“Letters give people the opportunity to prepare,” she said, pleasantly. “I find I get more accurate information without them.” She looked at him. Then she looked at Anna. Then back. “Sit down, Frederick. I believe you have something to tell me.”
He sat. He did not look at Anna, but he was aware of her presence, and he took a breath in. Her violet perfume crossed his nose, and he picked up a teacup, which Simmons had apparently anticipated. It helped.
“Miss Anna Cartwell is staying here… under our protection,” he said plainly, without preamble.
“She was coerced into a marriage ten days ago, without her knowledge or consent. The man involved has a reputation for violence. She is here while my attorney pursues an annulment. I have asked the household to keep her presence discreet.”
Lady Oldbarrow listened to all of this without a change of expression. When he had finished, she was quiet for a moment.
“Coerced,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Who arranged it?”
“Her cousin. Viscount Edgeware.” A pause. “And the… Earl of Birchall.”
Something moved across Lady Oldbarrow’s face at the second name. It was a brief, controlled compression of the mouth into a thin line that said she had heard that name in a specific context before.
She looked at Anna, her expression almost soft. “Are you hurt, child?” she asked.
“No,” Anna said. “I am all right, my lady.”
“And the marriage… Has it been…?”
“No,” Frederick said.
Another pause. Lady Oldbarrow looked at her hands, which were folded in her lap, and then at the window. Frederick could see her working through it, the social arithmetic of the situation, the columns of risk and consequence.
“The scandal will be considerable,” she said at last. “When it comes out. Even if the annulment is successful. The ton doesn’t take broken marriages well.”
“I know,” Anna said, and Frederick admired her bravery as he admired her appearance.
Few women possess this sort of bravery, to run away from an impossible situation with few resources and connections. How could she possess such strength for such a beautiful creature?
“Your cousin will not take it quietly. And Birchall…” He stopped. “Men like Birchall do not accept losses with grace.”
“I know that too.” Anna kept her voice steady. “I have had some time to consider it, my lady.”
Lady Oldbarrow looked at her. It was a long look, the kind that assessed. Then her face softened, settled, and what came through was something simpler and more direct.
“You are very composed for a lady in your situation,” she said, which was exactly what Frederick had been noticing for days.
“I am trying to be.”
“That is usually how it works.” She was quiet for a moment.
“You have nothing to fear from me, my dear. I shan’t say a word.
Not to anyone, not in any company, not even to my nieces Lily and Sophia.
They are rather good with secrets, I will say, but that is besides the point.
” She glanced at Frederick and raised her eyebrow, arching her body slightly toward him. “You might have told me, you know.”
“You were in Bath,” He said as he crossed his arms defensively.
“I was in Bath and I have legs, Frederick. And a perfectly functional postal system.”
“I was managing the situation,” He said as he ran a hand through his hair.
“Yes. You were managing it alone, which is your preferred method of managing everything and has been since you were seventeen.” She looked at him for a moment longer and let her eyebrow retreat to its normal position. Then she looked at Rachel and shook her head. “You look exhausted, my dear.”
Rachel blinked, then rubbed her arms with her hands. “I… I’m perfectly—”
“You’ve been arguing with your brother.”
Rachel’s mouth opened, then closed. Frederick noticed then how her amber eyes were dark, the fatigue in her usually rosy cheeks.
“The house has a particular atmosphere when you two have argued,” Lady Oldbarrow said.
“I have stayed here often enough to know it.” She accepted more tea from the pot Anna had lifted, with a small nod of thanks.
“I’ll stay for dinner and leave tomorrow morning.
” She patted Rachel’s hand. “Now tell me about the rose garden. I saw it from the carriage. The left border looked rather overgrown.”
Dinner that evening held a different quality from the ones preceding it. Lady Oldbarrow sat at Frederick’s right, which was where she had always sat, she informed them. It had been that way since the previous duke had placed her there forty years ago, and she had no intention of relocating.
Rachel sat across from Anna. Percy, whose internal geography appeared to include the dining room on cool evenings, materialized from somewhere near the sideboard and arranged himself beside Frederick’s. The food was good, and the fire was warm.
“Frederick,” Lady Oldbarrow said, as the first course of mulligatawny was served. “Do you remember what you said to the gardener when you were nine years old? About the topiary?”
Frederick reached for his wine. “No.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I’m certain I don’t.”
“You told him,” Lady Oldbarrow turned to Anna with a wry smile.
“The old head gardener had spent three weeks shaping a rather ambitious hedge into the shape of a horse. Enormous undertaking, even for such talent as old Henry. He was very proud of it.” She paused.
“Frederick walked past it one morning, looked at it for a very long time, and told the under-gardener that it looked like a remarkably well-fed sheep.”
Rachel made a sound that was not quite a laugh, successfully suppressed.
“I was nine,” Frederick said as he motioned for a footman to refresh his wine glass.
“You said it to the under-gardener,” Lady Oldbarrow continued, undeflected, “who then repeated it to the head gardener, who did not speak to anyone for three days.” She tilted her head.
“Three days! The hedge was dismantled the following month. The head gardener told your father it had root disease.”
“It may have had root disease,” Frederick said, toying with his fork rather than meeting anyone’s eyes.
“It did not have root disease, Frederick. It looked like a sheep and he knew it.”
“And then there was Rachel,” Lady Oldbarrow continued, turning smoothly toward her, “at approximately the same age, who decided that the hall clock was incorrect!”
“Oh, please don’t—” Rachel began.
“—and took it upon herself to adjust it. By one hour. In the wrong direction.”
“I was seven!”
“The household ran an hour behind for an entire day. The cook served luncheon at two.” Lady Oldbarrow’s eyes were bright. “She hid behind the hall curtains when it was discovered by the household,” she told Anna. “The ones by the east window. For approximately forty-five minutes.”
“They were good curtains for hiding.” Rachel folded her hands demurely.
“She was not found until dinner.”
Anna had been watching this as if a storybook was unfolding before her eyes.
She watched the way the table had changed shape around Lady Oldbarrow’s stories, the way Rachel had gone from the careful pleasantness of a person managing a difficult atmosphere to something looser and more genuine, and the way His Grace had…
The way Frederick, as Lady Oldbarrow called him, stopped presenting his controlled surface quite so thoroughly. He was looking at his godmother with an expression that had something akin to warmth, which spread to Anna’s heart.
Anna knew he was feeding Percy under the table.
She could see it: the slight movement of his hand, the way Percy had oriented himself with absolute certainty, the piece of chicken that had not made it back to his plate.
Something about the subtle paternal instincts made Anna’s heart swell, as she thought about her deep wish to have something to nurture.
“He knows perfectly well I can see him,” Lady Oldbarrow said, without looking down, as the next course was served.
“Percy earns his keep,” Frederick said.
“Percy,” Lady Oldbarrow told Anna, “has found a very intelligent human and has been living on roast chicken ever since.” She paused. “I respect it, frankly. A cat after my own heart.”
Anna laughed. It came out fully, not the constrained, careful sound she had been producing in pleasant company.
It was her real one, unguarded, surprised out of her by the absolute precision of the observation.
She didn’t realize how badly she needed a laugh.
It lasted only a moment. But it filled the room.
She felt the Duke go still.
She did not look at him immediately; she couldn’t. So, she looked at Lady Oldbarrow, who was smiling, and at Rachel, who was grinning, and by the time she looked at his Grace, he was looking at his plate, and his jaw was very slightly tight. That was all.
Lady Oldbarrow caught Anna’s eye across the table. The old woman’s expression was entirely unreadable and somehow communicated thoroughly, as someone who had been watching people for sixty years did. Her gaze drifted to her godson, back to Anna, then down to her plate.
“Who is ready for dessert?”